HORNELL— THE INDIAN CONCH 61 



Ma'bar or Maabar, the Arab name for the western coast of the Pandyan country, 

 has probably a parallel derivation, Maabar being indeed a very fair rendering by guttural 

 Arab lips of the Tamil term Maravar. 



The next writer to mention the chank is the Arab Abouzeyd, who in 851 A.D. 

 stated that " they find on the shores of Ceylon the pearl and the shank, which serves 

 for a trumpet and which is much sought after." ^ 



A long gap occurs in references by travellers to chank-fisheries till the days of the 

 Portuguese and Dutch when they became fairly frequent. A few years before the 

 establishment of the former power in the Gulf of Mannar, the traveller Barbosa visited 

 the old town of Kayal, and from him we learn that it was then still an important seaport 

 where many ships from Malabar, Coromandel and Bengal resorted every year to trade 

 with the rich Hindu and Muhammadan merchants living there, a definite statement 

 which shows that there was even then no difficulty in forwarding supplies of chanks 

 direct by sea to the Dacca workshops. 



Barbosa also tells us that at the time of his visit the fishery off this coast belonged 

 to the king of Koulam (Quilon in the southern part of Travancore) who generally resided 

 at Kayal and who farmed the pearl-fishery to a wealthy Muhammadan.^ The chank- 

 fishery so far as we know has always been an adjunct to the more romantic pearl-fishery 

 and must almost certainly have been treated in a similar manner, both fisheries being 

 considered everywhere in India from immemorial times as prerogatives of the sovereign. 

 About 1524, the Portuguese seized the Tinnevelly pearl-fishery, stationing a factor and 

 guard boats on this coast — the Pescaria or fishery coast as it soon became termed. In 

 1563, Garcia da Orta speaks of the trade with Bengal having declined owing to the unrest 

 caused by Muhammadan invaders in that country, but in 1644, Boccaro in a detailed 

 report upon the Portuguese ports and settlements in India records that a large quantity 

 of chanks fished off Tuticorin were exported to Bengal " where the blacks make of them 

 bracelets for the arm." He adds rather quaintly the name of another Tuticorin 

 production — ■" the biggest and best fowls in all these eastern parts." ^ Exactly how the 

 Portuguese conducted this trade and what profits it yielded them are not known to me ; 

 the Dutch, so far as they were able, destroyed the Portuguese archives in Tuticorin 

 as well as in Ceylon, and we must await further research among the records at Lisbon 

 before we can gain any further information. 



The Dutch, keen to distinguish the substance from the shadow, paid great attention 

 to the development of the chank-fishery as distinguished from the pearl-fishery whereof 

 one of their most able local Governors, Baron Van Imhoff, once queried (1740) whether 

 the latter " is not more glitter than gold as so many things are which belong to the 

 Company, which shine uncommonly but have no real substance." * 



1 Fide Yule's " Hobson-Jobson." ^ Fide Yule's " Hobson-Jobson," article "Chank." 



3 Fide Yule, "The Book of Ser Marco Polo," Vol. II, p. 307, London, 1871. 



* Hornell, " Report to the Government of Madras on the Indian Pearl Fisheries in the Gulf of 

 Mannar," Madras, 1905. 



